5 Ways To Make Your Site Mobile Friendly

Take a minute to look away from your screen. What is around you? Are you in your office? Are there other people engrossed in the mobile screens? This little experiment is meant to highlight the importance of mobile devices to our everyday lives.

In any given moment, on any given day there are billions of people across the globe looking at their mobile devices. That means your website needs to be able to be where the eyes are. If your site is lacking basic mobile-friendly components, you could be missing out on potential consumers.

Recent data from comScore’s 2016 U.S. Mobile App Report reveals that digital media consumption grew 53 percent from 2013 to 2016 and of that growth 80 percent was mobile. These findings tell us two things, consumers are totally plugged in, and they are using their mobile devices more than ever.

To compete with other websites in your category and industry, you must take control of your online presence and the way it is consumed. So, maybe it’s time to focus on mobile-first and friendly ways of accomplishing this.

Don’t Make A Separate Site

This is pretty straight-forward. It would be against your best interest to have traffic going to two different sites. For a few years, brands used this method and ultimately saw their rankings slip.

We are visual creatures, and as such, we crave pictures and videos that capture our interest. But, it goes beyond pretty pictures. The size of your image can impact the way your site loads on mobile. Although mobile devices are advanced, they don’t have the capabilities of desktops. As a result, large file sizes can slow down website loading times to a crawl.

What you can do: Upload small files to your site so that larger images don’t cause lagging. Create your own images, steer clear of stock photos if you can or choose ones that are visually stimulating as well as relevant.

Use Standard Fonts

Your site’s fonts are just as important as the content they hold. Have you ever been to a site and the font was so unbearable, that you had to leave? Yeah, don’t be that site. Choose sans-serif or “clean” serif found to help your website read well. This is especially important when thinking of mobile users. Different phone screens can have different resolutions, and that cool (not so cool) comic sans or whimsical font you downloaded off of DatFont may ruin the user’s experience.

What you can do: Talk to your web designer about fonts and have an idea of the type of fonts that will complement your site, as well as offer users with the best experience.

Give Your Visitor Viewing Options

Sometimes a website visitor wants to view your site in full view or desktop. Don’t deny them their wants and you will have happy visitors all the way round.

What you can do: Discuss desktop view options with your designer. You can give users the option.

Embrace Updates

Never stop testing your responsively designed sites. Technology is rapidly changing, and mobile devices are no exception. Review your site and test it against different devices to see how it performs. These performance metrics can enhance visitor experience.

What you can do: Use a mobile-friendly test to see if your site stacks up against devices. MobiReady is a great tool for this.